Wild Horses
by Nonchey Niente
Summary: You're crazy and mixed up and sometimes pretty dark Robert Goren, just like New York City...
1. Chapter 1

**Wild Horses**

"_I watched you suffer a dull aching pain, Now you decided to show me the same No sweeping exits or offstage lines, Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind - Wild horses couldn't drag me away. Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away"_

(This song is accredited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but I have a feeling it may have originally been written by Gram Parsons.)

I know nothing at all about the monetary value of Goren's 1966 (?) Ford Mustang, not knowing what condition it is in.

A Mustang _(Equus caballus) _is often referred to as a Wild Horse. They are small, compact and very hardy.

Just like Alex Eames. Fortunately.

/

Eames watches ruefully as an unrepentant Declan Gage is led away by uniforms to the holding cell. She hadn't suspected the old man until Goren pointed out the discrepancy with the postmark on the package containing Nicole Wallace's heart.

Her attention turns back to Goren. She wonders about the state of the package containing _his_ heart.

"Hey," she says, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite him. There is, predictably, no answer. Goren has his eyes closed, his head resting in his hands, and appears to be on some other world. But Eames is used to that. She clears her throat. "Ross has oh-so-kindly allowed us to complete paperwork tomorrow morning, 8.30am start."

No response. She tries another tack.

"So ... I am going to take you to a nightclub and see if I can get you hooked up for the night with someone half your age. Sound good?"

Bobby opens one eye. She almost smiles at him. But not quite. "Come on, let's get out of here. Give me your car keys."

He opens his other eye.

"Look," says Eames, her tone conspiratorial. She leans in closer to him. "You're exhausted, overwrought. Grief-stricken. I have to take advantage of that. When else would you ever let me drive your Mustang? Now - give me the keys."

Speechless, Goren gives her the keys.

/

Eames turns the engine over and revs it a couple of times. Like an expert, thinks Goren. He's apprehensive, but too numb to do very much about it. If he can't trust Eames to drive him safely in his own car, then who CAN he trust?

_I mean, who else is left?_

She eases out of the parking space and Goren breathes deep and relaxes. He leans back, watching the interplay of muscles in the top of her arms as she winds the steering wheel around and around. He thinks how her driving his cumbersome, awkward and petulant old car is a metaphor for her presence in his life. She is more than capable of dealing with whatever he throws at her.

A strong and beautiful woman driving a classic muscle car. Other men would pay money for this experience, he thinks.

The guttural sound of the engine as it idles at the traffic lights, the smell of the waxed leather seats; it all rocks him gently. Like a lullaby. He has not often been a passenger in his own car, letting someone else take charge, navigate, propel him forwards. He's been his own driver for so many years.

The car slides forward and his eyes slide closed and he falls again into the untidy sleep of a man with too much on his mind.

Eames glances over at him. Goren's head rolls, banging against the window column, but that isn't enough to waken him. She checks the rear-view and slows down to a speed that the car is barely comfortable with, but which is better for his skull.

_He's probably had enough knocks just now,_ she thinks.

He has nearly three-quarters of a tank. Plenty for what she wants to do. She drives and drives.

The city spreads out like the legs of a whore, as the big car noses on into the depths of it. Eames feels like she knows every part of New York, but parts of it still have the ability to surprise her and horrify her, albeit briefly.

The last couple of days have been a Coney Island roller coaster. She's learnt more about her partner in that short time than she has done in seven years sitting opposite him.

She knows his favourite restaurants for take-out, and how he's been supplementing his income by ghost writing essays for failing Ivy Leaguers.

How he buys dishwashing liquid in bulk because it is cheaper. About his battles to get his medical debts restructured, and how close he has been to bankrupcy.

It isn't just about the money. She knows which sex-lines he calls, and how he kept every single stupid joke e-mail she has ever sent him.

_You're crazy and mixed up and sometimes pretty dark Goren, just like New York City_ ... she thinks.

_But I still don't want to be anywhere else._

/

He wakes up later and starts, confused. The seat belt across his lap holds him safe as he remembers.

"Where are we?"

"Just coming into the Bronx."

He yawns so hard she hears his jaw bone click. "Where are we going?"

"Nowhere. Well - everywhere. I just want to drive your car some more." She meets his gaze for a moment and says, "God knows when you'll be weak enough again to actually let me when I ask."

Goren stares out of the window at the endless B-movie starring nocturnal New York City sliding past him. The doze has refreshed him but he still feels pretty horrible. The moving picture cityscape suits his mood.

Eames says, "This is a beautiful car. You can't sell it."

He sighs. She is referring to the e-mails between him and Lewis she has seen on his server. "Can't you re-finance somehow?"

"Huh. You tell me. You know more about my credit rating now than I do."

There is an uncomfortable pause, where the car's spacious interior suddenly feels constricting and close. Outside it has started to rain. Eames fumbles for the windshield wipers and Goren leans over to flick the lever for her.

"I had to do that, Bobby. You know I did."

Goren is reminded of something similar that he said to an outraged and tearful Eames when he had re-opened her husband's murder case. The memory makes him feel very sour.

"Let me guess. You were only following orders." he snips.

"Yes - something like that." A beat. The wipers slap lazily back and forth. "Pretty much the same as you were doing at the end of your suspension."

He clenches his jaw in irritation and sucks in air though his teeth. They could go on like this for ever. Here he is, fresh from a game of deadly tit-for-tat with Nicole Wallace and suddenly he's engaged in something similar with Alex Eames. It all feels vitally familiar. Gage was right. Eames does remind him of his mother.

And, right on cue, she digs at him again. "Anyway, don't get all prissy with me. That smoke and brimstone routine might work on poor old Liz Rodgers, but I've seen the ordinary little man behind the green curtain working the buttons and levers - "

_The Wizard of Oz?_ He has to interrupt her now."Is that your version of a cultural reference, Eames? I guess the Water Carrier has learnt a thing or two from the Genius, eh?"

She purses her lips. Seconds out, round two. "You're really bargain basement tonight, you know that?"

"Yeah. I guess. That was cheap. But I just wish you'd told me what you were doing, is all."

Eames snorts derisively and shakes her head. The hypocrisy of what he says is not lost on her. "You should know better than to antagonise the person driving your twenty thousand dollar car, Goren. Anyway, I did tell you. I changed your email password, remember?"

"Oh. 'Bigfoot' ... "

"The Water Carrier is considerably less dumb than she is given credit for. It was my way of letting you know I had been there."

A frown throws a rope around Goren's brows and pulls them tight together. How had he forgotten that? The - very obvious - password change was how he'd discovered that he'd been hacked in the first place, which led him to immediately look for evidence that his Credit Union communications and his LUDs had been compromised, too.

Silence settles like a wet dog in the car. It's quiet, but you can still smell it.

Without bothering to consult him she gets Chinese takeout and lets them both into his apartment using her spare key. He'd forgotten she even had one. How is it he could have been so clumsy, to let this determined little one-woman army of a woman march victorious into his life, without even putting up a fight?

He is too tired to be embarrassed by the state of his kitchen, but she doesn't seem to notice the mess. After the revelations of the last forty-eight hours, an untidy kitchen is probably the last thing about him that concerns her. They sit and eat. Well, she eats, anyway. She is ravenous.

"Honestly Eames, this - " He gestures at the spread of food with his chopsticks, but then gives up on whatever platitude he had been thinking of trying with her. "I really just want to be on my own."

"Yeah, I know you do." Eames stabs into the cardboard bucket of Kung Pao. He looks at her uncomprehendingly. She finishes her mouthful and has a swig of beer before saying again, "I know you do."

She lays her chopsticks down. What she has to say is more important than the food. He settles back in his chair, watching her. He fancies he can see the feelings prowling around beneath the skin of her face, threatening at any moment to appear.

"Do you remember when my sister and her husband came to take the baby?" she says quietly, after a while.

Of course he remembers. She's only asking him that to give herself more time. "I said I needed to be alone, and you left. But then you sat outside my room for seven and a half hours, listening to me cry."

He is genuinely surprised. "How did you know I was there?" he asks, intrigued in spite of himself.

She looks at him, her lip curled in mock disdain for his great foolishness. "I'm Senior Partner. Detective First Grade, NYPD. Major Case. Of course I knew you were there."

So. He's been rumbled again. Another one of his carefully nurtured secrets is exposed. He fumbles for an excuse, an explanation. Anything to avoid telling her how he had really felt that night. He's so tired now, all he can come up with is the truth. "I knew you wanted to be alone. You told me that. But I didn't want to leave."

Eames feels she has made her point rather well. She reclaims her fallen chopsticks and makes another assault on the pork balls. "I'll sleep on your couch tonight, then." It isn't a question.

Goren struggles. He is feeling overwhelmed by events and by people doing things for him that he might never have imagined, a year or so ago. "I don't know what to say," he mumbles.

"Just say 'thank you' and, 'are you going to eat that last egg roll?' like you normally do, Bobby."

He makes a sound suddenly - a curious noise - and at first Eames fears he is choking. Then her fears turn to alarm - is he crying again? It is only after a few anxious moments that she realises he is, in fact, laughing.

"I cannot believe how you got me to let you drive my car," he says, shaking his head. And he picks up his chopsticks again.


	2. Chapter 2

-1The beauty of eating with chopsticks, is that it leaves one hand free. Still coasting on the ebb tide of his own laughter, Goren snakes his right hand through the mass of ruined-temple-in-the-jungle takeout cartons and wraps his own fingers around Eames's. He gives them a reassuring little squeeze.

"Really, Eames. I'm good. You don't need to sleep on my couch tonight."

She flicks her head slightly, in a gesture that he recognises as one of either slight irritation, or of indecision. Cats do the same thing, he thinks, with their tails. When it is raining and they want to go outside. But it's raining. But they want to go outside. But it's raining ..

Rather deliberately, Eames stands up and comes around to his side of the table. A little too late, he sees what is happening. What might be happening. What really, _really_ should not be happening. What he wants more than anything, to be happening.

She stands just a fraction too close to him. Wordlessly she reaches forwards and pushes two, then three of her fingers through the silvering hair above his ear. She pauses there for a moment, considering, then trickles her fingers downwards down to linger on the bump of bone at the back of his jaw.

He actually has to brace himself against the edge of the table.

"Eames - we said we wouldn't do this again."

This is not, strictly speaking, true. No words on the subject were ever actually spoken - the two of them had simply exchanged glances on the concourse outside One Police Plaza the morning after, and had come instinctively to one of their extraordinary joint conclusions that other detective teams so envied about them.

All it took was a look, and expression, a reading of body language. And at that time they both knew what the other was thinking and feeling.

He licks his lips nervously. "Eames..?"

She seems not to hear him. Her fingers abseil lazily off the precipice of bone and down the side of his neck, diving lazily into the crevasse of his shirt collar. His eyes slide away, looking for something to distract him, but his hands seem to have other ideas about this. They leave the safety of the table edge and pull her down so she is sat in his lap.

Perfect fit.

A kiss is inevitable, really.

But she takes her time, nudging her nose repeatedly against the bottom of his, thereby coaxing his head upwards to a better angle. Her fingers are still playing just under his collar, in the smooth no-man's-land of skin between the battle lines of his beard and the hair on his chest. His shirt buttons fall back and take cover.

And so it is, that with even less effort than it took to steal his car and break into his home, Alex Eames takes Goren's body for herself, too. There are so many reasons in Goren's head why this is all a bad idea - a very, very bad idea - but he cannot hear what the voices are saying just now. He's distracted, as her tongue slides neatly in between his lips and teeth - just like her key slipped into the lock on his front door. Sure enough, his lock clicks and he swings open for her. He tumbles headfirst into the kiss.

He is no longer in control - has he ever been? But the thought of that simply excites him more. He thinks of how it felt to have her drive him in his own car. Truthfully? It was wonderful. So much of his life is all about being in control of things. But not this.

Having had a brother like Frank, a man hooked on drugs and compulsive gambling, Bobby Goren thinks he understands the nature of addiction with a stark clarity. But what is happening to him right here and now in his own kitchen, seems to make it all even clearer - it answers the niggling question of how Frank could be smoking crack-cocaine a mere three hours after attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and boasting of how he had been clean for weeks. Maybe Frank really had _believed himself _to be clean?

Likewise, Robert Goren thought that he had kicked his own habit. His grip around his partner's body tightens imperceptibly. Ahhh no ... perhaps not.

His hands move up from her waist, working a leisurely passage around the coastline of her ribcage, up towards her armpits and then back down again. His palms brush fleetingly but deliberately against the sides of her breasts as they move. In return, she also pushes her hands northwards, gripping his face. She splays her fingers all over his cheeks and jaw.

"I don't want to sleep on your couch," she says into his mouth.

"No. I kind of gathered that - "

The kiss resumes entirely of its own accord. Somehow he - or, someone - has pulled her shirt out of the waistband of her jeans, and is pushing the buttons open one by one. The skin on her belly goose-pimples, and every single hair on her body stands to attention for him.

Fortunately his hands are warm. Once inside her clothing they move with remarkable rapidity, intent on their task of getting her undressed. He breaks the kiss for a moment so that he can get a better look at her. Pushing aside various pieces of fabric, he leans in and swirls the end of his tongue over one nipple and then blows very gently, his breath on the wet flesh chilling it erect. Who needs an ice-cube? It's a trick that makes him smile. It has a different effect on his partner though; she almost vaults off his lap and, grabbing his belt buckle, hauls him off the chair - not without some difficulty - and towards the bedroom.

The bedroom is even more wrecked than the kitchen. Strangely, Eames seems not to notice. Or, if she does, she doesn't care. Goren breaks free from her death grip on his waist band.

"Sorry about the state of this room," he says in a voice that betrays his total lack of concern for the state of this room. "But before we go any further, I am having a shower."

"Be quick. I'll go after you."

So he is quick. He shaves. He cuts himself, and curses. He climbs into the shower. The shock of the water on his bare skin has the effect of throwing him back into reality. What on earth is going on here?

He and Eames have already tried this, and it didn't work. Fortunately they were both mature enough and knew each other well enough to have been able to avoid any of the major romantic clichés that Broadway musicals are made of.

Goren comes to a difficult decision. He stands under the shower and slowly and deliberately turns the water temperature down to as cold as he can possibly cope with. He grits his teeth. His ardour is chilled into insignificance. "You'll thank me in the long run!" he says, looking down at his crestfallen friend.

-oOOo-

Eames has showered. Quickly. Super quickly. But not quickly enough, it would seem.

She looks at Goren's recumbent form with more affection than she would normally show him to his face. In spite of the fact that twenty-five minutes ago she had her tongue in his mouth and her hand on his crotch, outright affection for him is still sometimes difficult for her to show. In her mind, it gives him too much power over her. She needs to remain in charge, of herself if not of him.

_Poor bastard. He must be exhausted._

His hair is dark from the shower, still wet, little curls waving at her from behind his ears. She thinks he may even be snoring. He is lying on his stomach with his head turned towards her, pillows thrown petulantly onto the floor. She is engrossed in watching him sleep - his lips slightly parted, breathing through his mouth like a small child with a cold. She can see his eyes moving restlessly behind their lids. Did he ever get teased about those eyelashes when he was a kid, she wonders. She remembers watching him dream - he was sedated, actually - in the hospital after she and Ross had hauled him out of Tate's, and how she had imagined she could see all ages of the man in his sleeping face.

It's better this way, she decides. She tries to tidy up her emotions, and is looking for storage boxes to put them all in. Sex between the two of them is too complicating a matter at this stage in his life - or hers, for that matter.

She stands wavering, naked, undecided. Should she go home? The thought is dismissed. A cab? To Queens? At this hour? No. Still shivering, she turns and roots around in his chest of drawers and pulls out a black tee-shirt - one of many, all of them ironed and folded neatly.

_(Goren watches her with one chocolate-brown eye. When the eye rebelliously comes to rest on the provocative curve of her ass, he screws it shut again. The tiniest of sighs escapes him.)_

Eames slides the black tee-shirt over her head, pushing her goose-fleshed arms gratefully through the sleeves. The shirt is freshly laundered and ironed _(He irons his underwear? Must be an Army thing ... )_ but it still smells of him. That is comforting, somehow.

She hits the lights and slides slowly and carefully into the bed.

_(A few minutes after that Goren gives up feigning sleep, and actually falls asleep. It is the first time he has been in full agreement with his body all day long.)_

-oOOo-

At some point in the night, the rain finally gives up and goes home. With a great unheard sigh the city surrenders the last of the day's hoarded warmth into the newly clear skies which seem to swallow everything - heat, light and noise - until all that is left early the next morning is coldness, darkness and silence.

The two people sleeping side by side in the big old bed are both New York natives and as such, this unnatural silence upsets them. It pulls them both out of sleep.

For a few moments Eames is frightened, disorientated, not knowing where she is. Then Goren stirs in the cotton-clad darkness at her side, and she breathes easy again, remembering.


End file.
